16 December 2006

What a pleasant surprise. Of course I have read Neil Gaiman before - Good Omens, most of the Sandman, Neverwhere, American Gods, 1602, &c. - and always liked what I read. Interesting read for a rainy afternoon. But this volume of short stories is better than anything of these; this man is a genius with short stories

Some of them are just pure, hilarious fun; others are scary - and I mean real scary, and one or two just seemed to reach inside my head and do something with my imagination.

He has totally silly poems in this collection - that still triggered me to get out some volumes of serious poetry. He has detective stories intermingled with the horrors of the deep; there is a vision of hell more unsettling than any I ever encountered. The best treatment of the 'Matrix' concept - one, that unlike the movie does actually make sense (well, in a way); variations of traditional fairy tales - Bluebeard, Goldilocks, Aladdin.